GameCredits News

Gaming and world-building universe AlterVerse announced yesterday that they had joined the Early Adopter Program of the Enjin blockchain platform.
AlterVerse will make blockchain-powered assets on its 17 gaming worlds, working together with Enjin.
It is currently giving away FREE Founder’s Token to the first 1000 people who join their Telegram and register.
Using Enjin’s Blockchain
As AlterVerse has joined the Early Adopter Program from Enjin and the Enjin Multiverse, it will now get access to the blockchain development tools of the platform.
The tools are currently in closed beta but will allow AlterVerse to induct pre-made and security audited smart contracts using the ERC-1155 standard.
Additionally, it will integrate the full catalog from the Enjin Multiverse into its games.
Enjin’s tools are now being used in 29 games, allowing players the freedom to move between gaming worlds and use their multiverse items, regardless of which world they go.
The function and form of the items change depending on the gaming universe a player is in.
The blockchain stores the history, identity, scarcity, provenance, and ownership of the item.
The Enjin Network currently has over 20 million users, thanks to its partnerships with Unity and PC Gamer.
It also hosts Minecraft servers on the blockchain.
AlterVerse’s 2019 Growth Story
AlterVerse has already completed a wide range of features for its games including VR compatibility, rank and stats system, weapon types, in-game voice chat, interactive, combat systems, an affiliate program, and more.
The debut release of AlterVerse is “Disruption,” a first-person adventure RPG style game.
The game will be made available to 125 million Steam users in Q1, 2019.
Disruption comes with four game modes, allowing users to work in a multiplayer environment too.
It is the first prototyped gaming world out of 17 by AlterVerse.
Their second offering Sky City, a free-to-play game will be dropping in Q2 2019.
The company is currently offering free Founder’s Token to the first 1000 members who join their Telegram channel and register.
AlterVerse Will Adopt Enjin Blockchain for All of Its 17 Gaming Worlds was originally found on [blokt] - Blockchain, Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

After migrating to Tron network earlier this year, Bitizens is now allowing users to purchase presale items using TRX coins.
Bitizens has also introduced a new TRON set which is available in limited quantities.
The items on sale are part of the exclusive Bitizens Pioneer set.
‘The Possibilities Are Endless’ With Tron
In a blog post announcing the presale of the pioneer sets, Bitguild noted that the possibilities are endless on the Tron network and that they are excited to see what the shift to Tron will bring, further adding:
“In a way, we are all pioneers now, treading uncharted territory in search of fresh and exciting experiences that will bring cryptogaming to a new frontier.”
Bitizens recently migrated from Ethereum to the Tron network.
Now Bitguild is bringing the Pioneer sets back for its users to commemorate the event, along with a new Tron set.
Tron has committed itself to gaming dApp development.
It has a gaming investment arm called Tron Arcade, a $100 million fund for blockchain game development.
Tron Arcade recently partnered with gumi Cryptos to co-invest in blockchain based games.
Which Sets Will Be Available to Purchase?
BitGuild provided details of the sets available to purchase in the presale.
The first collection is the limited-edition ‘Tron Set’ that includes Tron themed sneakers, pants, jacket, and a cap. The set will cost 5,000 TRX.
The second set is named ‘Pioneer of the Wilds’ which is priced at 7,000 TRX.
The explorer outfits include expedition boots, pants, jacket and a pith helmet.
The ‘Pioneer of the Skies’ pack is worth 20,000 TRX and comes with a flight suit theme including pilot’s boots, flight pants, pilot’s jacket, and aviation goggles.
The last set is named ‘Pioneer of the Seas’ which can be bought for 50,000 TRX. It comes with weighted boots, diving pants, diving top, and a deep-sea helmet.
The Pioneer’s Compass and Cyberspace Pioneer set are already sold out. The items will never be available to buy in-game again.
Bitizens Pioneer Items Now Available to Buy in TRX, Including a New TRON Set was originally found on [blokt] - Blockchain, Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

The gaming investment arm of The Tron Foundation, Tron Arcade announced that it is partnering with gumi Cryptos to co-invest in blockchain based games.
Gumi Cryptos is a$30 million blockchain/cryptocurrency fund, and together with Tron they will find projects that are using blockchain to transform the way games are “created and enjoyed.”
What Is gumi Cryptos?
Founded by gumi Inc, gumi Cryptos is a gaming company in Japan that will be working with Tron to leverage each others experience in gaming and blockchain.
Miko Matsumura, the general partner at the publicly traded company, said:
“Gamers are often the first adopters of any new technology. Although gumi Cryptos is not solely a game fund, we are happy to co-invest with TRON Arcade on startups best positioned to benefit from our Japan market-entry services and strong networks in gaming as well as TRON’s platform and distribution channels.”
Tron’s head of business development Roy Liu said that it was great that a leader in traditional gaming is interested in the emerging blockchain gaming.
Liu added:
“We both believe blockchain gaming will lead to the next wave of adoption for the nascent technology. There’s a good chance that the first ‘killer’ gaming Dapp will be the mass market use case that everyone is searching for.”
Tron’s Proficiency in Blockchain Gaming
Liu highlighted that Tron Arcade, along with its partners, will leverage their available resources and network to build improved use cases in blockchain.
Tron Arcade’s, Liu said they would permit developers to “let their imaginations run wild and build the games of tomorrow for a hungry audience.”
Millions of users and a high degree of scalability has helped Tron acquire some games and Dapps from the Ethereum blockchain.
Blockchain Cuties, Bitizens, and Everdragons are few games that are already finding Tron to be a better home than the Ethereum blockchain.
Tron Arcade, a $100 million gaming fund from Tron, is dedicated to helping developers develop games on the Tron network and unleash the potential of the blockchain gaming.
TRON Arcade Begins a New Investment Partnership With gumi Cryptos was originally found on [blokt] - Blockchain, Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Atari and Animoca Brands have announced that they have collaborated to develop blockchain versions of Atari’s RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch and Goon Squad games. This partnership will see Atari take $250,000 for the licensing deal to become a significant shareholder in Animoca Brands. Animoca Brands would share the proceeds from the games with Atari after the first $500,000 of gross revenue. This news comes after Animoca Brands recently acquired Pixowl, the developer of a building game dubbed ‘The Sandbox.’ (KE)

What Is Reddcoin?
Reddcoin is a decentralized, blockchain-based cryptocurrency used to tip or send payments for social content. Unlike competitor Steem (and legacy platforms like Snapcash), the Reddcoin API supports all social platforms, from Reddit to Twitter and Twitch. RDD, the native cryptocurrency coin of Reddcoin, is mined by the ReddID wallet through a Proof-of-Stake-Velocity, which increases your odds of mining a valid block through your RDD balance.
Social media is a big business - according to Pew Research, over 68 percent of American adults use Facebook alone. In fact, the social giant has over 2.27 billion monthly active users as of September 30, 2018. The rise of social media led to a rise in influencer marketing, with major social influencers generating millions of dollars in revenue.
Now everybody wants to be a social media influencer, and with brands pushing toward microinfluencers, socialcoins like RDD, SBD, and STEEM are well-positioned to bridge the gap. Everyone should get paid for making social platforms like Facebook popular, not just C-suite executives like Zuckerberg.
The idea of tipping content creators already created a rift that let social funding platforms like Patreon to create a new lane and flourish. If there’s money to be made in this lane, it’s going to be found, and Reddcoin isn’t the only one looking. Even Dogecoin is popularly used for tipping online.
Will social currency and Internet tipping become widespread enough to sustain an entire market?
Let’s begin answering that question with a breakdown of the RDD cryptocurrency and its market performance so far.
RDD Cryptocurrency Summary
As of December 17th, 2018, the circulating supply of Reddcoin is 28,808,713,174 RDD, with no total supply cap (the original hard cap of 109,000,000,000 was removed during the transition to PoSV). The peak price so far of RDD was $0.028770 on January 7, 2018.
The Reddcoin public ICO token sale ended January 20, 2014 and raised over $100,000 worth of BTC in anticipation of the platform’s February 2, 2014 release. Over 5.45 billion REDD was minted in this initial batch.
RDD was initially mined through PoW like BTC, but it was transitioned to PoSV mining in August 2014. The total supply of RDD increases approximately five percent on an annual basis.
PoSV still requires processing algorithms, but because RDD balances increase success probability, PCs, tablets, laptops, and smartphones can compete with ASIC mining rigs.
Reddcoin critics argue it can’t sustain value because of its divisibility and uncapped supply. Supporters argue a price over $0.01 already makes it difficult to support microtransactions online. Spending a penny is more emotional than spending one tenth of a penny, and on ad platforms used by most websites, approximately $0.01 is paid out for every 1000 views. This puts a hefty limit on social media, as nearly 80 percent of Facebook users (and 100% of real people) have 500 or fewer friends.
Over $200,000 worth of RDD is traded on a daily basis. Cryptocurrency exchanges that support RDD include Bittrex, Upbit, Litebit.eu, and Cryptopia. Reddcoin trading pairs include BTC, DOGE, and fiat currencies like EUR.
The official Reddcoin cryptocurrency wallet is available for desktop platforms and mines RDD. Also, ReddID runs as a browser extension that lets you easily tip people on any website or forum you visit within the browser. Think of it as a phonebook for Reddcoin addresses and usernames so you can locate wallet addresses for the creators you’re viewing.
Other third-party wallets have been created, including Reddcoin-Qt and reddcoind, however only ReddID has been confirmed for staking and earning RDD interest.
Socializing With Online Networks
When cryptocurrency started gaining mainstream attention in 2011, journalists, influencers, bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, and other content creators started posting their public keys online. Over the past decade, we all just kinda got used to seeing them on social media profiles and author bios.
Meanwhile in 2015, Facebook joined the ranks of messaging platforms to allow friend-to-friend payments. Microtransactions and social payments seem like the wave of the future, and several cryptocurrencies, like DOGE, have risen through the ranks as generally acceptable forms of payments to tip people online.
This forced platforms to push for proprietary currencies to tokenize transactions on their platforms, whether blockchain-based or not. Amazon-owned video game streaming service Twitch, for example, created its proprietary Bits currency in late 2017 it quickly integrated the service with PayPal for convenience.
Twitch has over 140 million monthly active users watching over 2.2 million monthly livestreams. Amazon spent $970 million to buy the company in 2014, and its top 10 streamers earn over $23 million a year in combined revenue.
But earning a living on these platforms isn’t as easy as it looks - top earners have professional teams helping with

As you may have read in the last few weeks, we are rolling out a new post series for our Premium readers. It will feature recurring updates on the state of Asia Cryptocurrency and Blockchain. We have come up with 4 high-level topics, and every week we will be writing about one of these topics, and rotating through them in the following order.
China (with commentary on recent regulatory trends, media sentiment, and touching on exchanges and company developments)Asia Countries ex-China (with commentary on regulations, media sentiments, crypto projects, exchanges, and company developments)Exchanges And Mining (Binance, Huobi, Upbit, Bitmain, Canaan, etc)Crypto Projects and Funding Trends
Check out our previous pieces on China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, etc.
This week, we are touching on Crypto Projects and Funding Trends. And as we wrap up with 2018, we are introducing an onetime piece around Crypto projects this week. That is, we look back on 2018 and identify 5 role model western projects that have successfully been making way into Asia.
We also recently saw great reception with our Quick Guide to Asia Market Entry - China, Korea, Japan, Singapore post, and we’ve shared a spreadsheet detailing the data here.
Check it out and let us know if it’s helpful for you. Thank you for reading.
The 2018 Asia Awards: 5 Western Projects Successfully Making Way into Asia
Unlike most folks in the industry, we at GCR have been appreciating and enjoying this bear market. We have fewer conferences and less fundraising activities going on, and companies can finally learn how to be resourceful and bootstrap in preparation for this ongoing Crypto winter.
At this point in time, many projects in the US are building and looking to fulfill their promises to ship something in the first half of 2019.
At GCR, we believe that for protocols and blockchain projects, building technology is great, but not enough. Blockchain technology and token design should be, and indeed continue to be, the priority (for now), but we do not believe it should be the only thing that projects focus on.
With the promise of decentralized communities that many projects initially laid out in their visions, we believe that the founding team ought to spend at least 10% of their time thinking about their go-to-market strategy, and where and who their initial adopters would be.
On a high level, we are seeing projects falling into 2 paths right now when approaching user adoption. In the 1st path, the project launches locally, then wait for adoption to grow, and then launch in a number of regions around the world, something like an Uber model. And for path 2, the project starts off by simultaneously building communities in various locations around the world, and then launch product and gauge community adoption and participation.
Both paths have their pros and cons, and projects may find that one path may fit for them better than the other. We often see projects that are often a technically strong team, have built decentralized products, and want to build communities around the world. However, they don’t know how to go about building global communities or they don’t know where to start.
Another reason that often prevents these projects from pursuing path 2 is cost. Going abroad and spending time in foreign countries is more expensive on a time and dollar basis. At least that is the case initially.
In either case, for many of these companies looking for adoption, it has increasingly become apparent to them that their first launch market may not be the US, or anywhere near the Western Hemisphere.
GCR has a primary focus on Asia, and as a result, we have identified companies who has been actively building out a presence in Asia. There are many projects that do trips in Asia once or twice a year, and certainly commend them for their effort. But given the massive amount of $ that these projects have raised, we don’t think that is enough.
At GCR, we evaluated projects that raised money from late 2017 and early 2018. There are a number of standout companies that have dedicated notable resources to Asia and we’d like to recognize them as role models in the space that other projects can look to learn from their successes, and failures.
We applaud these companies as we believe they are doing some of the hardest work uplifting local communities, dedicating resources to educate local communities on Blockchain technology, and actively participating and contributing to the regional ecosystems, all the way from the other side of the world. Without further ado, here are the top 5 thoughtful western companies successfully making way into Asia.
Tezos Foundation
In 2018, GCR is recognizing Tezos and its Foundation for their commitment to promote Blockchain education to young people and in universities in Asia.
Tezos and its foundation have had its fair of media spotlight beginning of this year, but in the second half of the year, the foundation has been making way successfully

Unlike most folks in the industry, we at GCR have been appreciating and enjoying this bear market. We have fewer conferences and less fundraising activities going on, and companies can finally learn how to be resourceful and bootstrap in preparation for this ongoing Crypto winter.
At this point in time, many projects in the US are building and looking to fulfill their promises to ship something in the first half of 2019.
At GCR, we believe that for protocols and blockchain projects, building technology is great, but not enough. Blockchain technology and token design should be, and indeed continue to be, the priority (for now), but we do not believe it should be the only thing that projects focus on.
With the promise of decentralized communities that many projects initially laid out in their visions, we believe that the founding team ought to spend at least 10% of their time thinking about their go-to-market strategy, and where and who their initial adopters would be.
On a high level, we are seeing projects falling into 2 paths right now when approaching user adoption. In the 1st path, the project launches locally, then wait for adoption to grow, and then launch in a number of regions around the world, something like an Uber model. And for path 2, the project starts off by simultaneously building communities in various locations around the world, and then launch product and gauge community adoption and participation.
Both paths have their pros and cons, and projects may find that one path may fit for them better than the other. We often see projects that are often a technically strong team, have built decentralized products, and want to build communities around the world. However, they don’t know how to go about building global communities or they don’t know where to start.
Another reason that often prevents these projects from pursuing path 2 is cost. Going abroad and spending time in foreign countries is more expensive on a time and dollar basis. At least that is the case initially.
In either case, for many of these companies looking for adoption, it has increasingly become apparent to them that their first launch market may not be the US, or anywhere near the Western Hemisphere.
GCR has a primary focus on Asia, and as a result, we have identified companies who has been actively building out a presence in Asia. There are many projects that do trips in Asia once or twice a year, and certainly commend them for their effort. But given the massive amount of $ that these projects have raised, we don’t think that is enough.
At GCR, we evaluated projects that raised money from late 2017 and early 2018. There are a number of standout companies that have dedicated notable resources to Asia and we’d like to recognize them as role models in the space that other projects can look to learn from their successes, and failures.
We applaud these companies as we believe they are doing some of the hardest work uplifting local communities, dedicating resources to educate local communities on Blockchain technology, and actively participating and contributing to the regional ecosystems, all the way from the other side of the world. Without further ado, here are the top 5 thoughtful western companies successfully making way into Asia.
Tezos Foundation
In 2018, GCR is recognizing Tezos and its Foundation for their commitment to promote Blockchain education to young people and in universities in Asia.
Tezos and its foundation have had its fair of media spotlight beginning of this year, but in the second half of the year, the foundation has been making way successfully into Asia through partnerships with universities and conducting meetups around Blockchain education. We look forward to more great things coming out from the team.
“The Tezos Foundation’s core mission is to support the long-term success of the Tezos protocol and ecosystem. By funding initiatives imagined by scientists, researchers, developers, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts, the Foundation encourages decentralized development and robust participation.”
Since August, the Tezos foundation team has been hard at work in writing research grants, initiating a number of university events and educational meetups in Asia around blockchain and OCaml. They have started forming deeper relationships in a number of cities in Asia through local partnerships and Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) agreements.
Some academic areas of focuses have included training students on OCaml, the programming language that Tezos is written in; partnering on a programming book with a professor from National University of Singapore; speaking about technical challenges facing blockchain at National Taiwan University Department of Computer Science & Information Engineering; doing meetup in Japan discussing PoS algorithms; and launching a Masterclass at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
The project has also set up various meetups in Southeast Asia in cities such as Bangkok and Han

When it comes to the SEC, Ripple plays the long game. While most token issuers are likely to take a plea deal, following the examples of Airfox and Paragon, there’s another way out for digital assets. By rapidly pushing their cryptocurrencies to full functionality, crypto companies like Ripple can create enough “Facts on the ground” to escape a securities classification altogether.
Ripple may be too big too fail. But in case that’s not enough, the company is rapidly becoming the kind of prey that’s just... too much trouble.
The Hinman Paradox
The possibility of “decentralizing” an entity out of being a security was outlined at the Yahoo! Finance summit, when the SEC’s William Hinman publicly stated that treating ether or bitcoin as securities “would seem to add little value.”
“Over time,” Hinman added, “there may be other sufficiently decentralized networks and systems where regulating the tokens or coins that function on them as securities may not be required.”
An SEC director is not under oath when he’s entertaining a paying audience, and a footnote to the speech makes clear that he was not speaking in an official capacity. Nonetheless, with other SEC officers reprising the same themes, Hinman’s speech is as close as we’re going to get to regulatory clarity right now.
And that speech suggests that a handful of advanced cryptocurrencies can escape a securities classification by becoming sufficiently developed and distributed that they no longer depend on central efforts. James Park, in a report for the Lowell Milken Institute, refers to it as the “Hinman Paradox:”
[F]or a utility token to be distributed freely without regulation by the securities laws, it must be functional. But many utility tokens are only functional if they are distributed widely enough so that a de-centralized system arises.
Very few initial coin offerings, Park suggests, will ever be sufficiently decentralized to escape the Hinman paradox, and the Ripple question is not addressed. But, based on what is publicly known of the SEC’s enforcement strategy, XRP is one of the best positioned to become decentralized enough to pass the Howey Test.
XRP: A Functional Utility?
The words “utility token” have acquired a sour taste, and for good reason. Over the past year, it has been badly misused by ICOs in search of easy money.
The fallacy, as SEC officials have made clear since 2016, is that almost every case the “utility” is on a non-existent platform. While regulators like Hinman and Valerie Szczepanik have entertained the possibility of utility tokens that are not securities, the vast majority of ERC-20’s definitely are.
But unlike most purported “utility tokens,” XRP already has almost all of the functionality it needs.
Unlike most ICOs, XRP isn’t intended for anything other than a system for payments and settlements—the platform is already functional. Anyone can use XRP for purchases or payments, and —after the xRapid launch—XRP is also in use for cross-border liquidity.
Sharing the Weight
Then there’s the question of “decentralization,” a thorny point of contention between Ripple and other cryptocurrencies. Decentralization is one of those words with nearly as many different definitions as it has users—but when the SEC uses it, it’s clear that they are referring to management.
In his speech, Hinman pointed out that both Bitcoin and Ether are large communities with many companies, all working (and competing) together. That can’t be said for Ripple - as much as the company insists otherwise, the fate of XRP seems to depend very much upon the company’s “managerial” efforts.
Crucially, that is already starting to change, after this year’s announcements that Omni and Coil will both facilitate payments in XRP. Both companies have strong ties to Ripple Labs, but are nonetheless separate and independent entities—giving a better claim that XRP depends on a market ecosystem rather than a single company.
Dollars and Cents
The final prong of this strategy comes down to nuts and bolts—and lawyer fees. While the SEC has not ruled anything out, all of its recent enforcements have been against tokens that launched after the 2017 DAO report - when the body first warned that tokens could be securities. In the words of Coinsource’s Deputy General counsel Max Rich, they’re “putting out current fires rather than attending to the charred remains of old fires.”
That doesn’t mean there’s a pardon in the mail for Ripple, but does offer a breathing space while regulators go after the lowest-hanging fruit—both in order to develop a stronger body of case law, and (perhaps a cynical point) to take advantage of the SEC’s limited resources.
This shouldn’t be taken as an argument that XRP is not a security. To the contrary, the fact that many investors regard Ripple Labs as the central actor for of XRP—not to mention the enormous centralization of tokens in Ripple’s hands—makes things look very bad indeed.
But that doesn’t mean the game is up. As stated in

The speeds of the current blockchain solutions are not even close to today’s payment standards like Visa or PayPal. The major blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, that have the largest amount of users among blockchain systems and the most developed ecosystems can’t even handle a network load of a few million concurrent users. Let’s take a look at the numbers:
Bitcoin handles only 7 transactions per second. That’s not great for the biggest cryptocurrency with millions of users.
Ethereum can process 15 transactions per second. That’s better, but let’s not forget that it hosts 2,191 decentralized applications and it got congested by CryptoKitties, which is only one popular dApp. It’s incapable of handling even two popular applications at this speed.
Litecoin can handle 56 tps, however, its architecture is very similar to Bitcoin.
During its tests, EOS was able to achieve nearly 3,000 transactions per second. It only has 101 dApps, which are used very rarely, so it didn’t have a chance to prove its speed.
NEO supports 1,000 transactions per second, also doing this by assigning the task of transactions confirmations to 13 nodes; most of them belonging to NEO’s development team, making it similar to a centralized network.
Source: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/avg-confirmation-time?timespan=180days
So, the highest capacity a blockchain is able to achieve is 3,000 tps at cost of sacrificing decentralization. At the same time, Visa is able to handle 24,000 tx/second, so this should be taken as a standard for any cryptocurrency or blockchain network aiming to achieve mass adoption. So why are they all so slow?
The unsolvable bottleneck problem
The most popular blockchain networks can be divided into two categories: Proof-of-Work and delegated Proof-of-Stake. The way they handle transactions is totally different, but it limits the speed anyway and the place where the limitation occurs is called a bottleneck.
Proof-of-Work (PoW) forces all miners to confirm the same transactions, so the whole network is busy solving the same algorithms; finding the necessary hash of the previous block to continue the chain. Thus the transaction speed depends on the size of the block and the size of a single transaction.
With Bitcoin it takes 10 minutes to mine a block (that’s a fixed average time) and the difficulty is artificially adjusted in such a way that mining 2,016 blocks takes two weeks. The same issue is found with Litecoin and Ethereum - PoW blockchains can’t scale well. If the network would try to calculate some blocks simultaneously, dividing all miners to a few groups, it would become vulnerable to a 51% attack, because it would become easier to overtake each individual group, requiring less resources than attacking a whole blockchain.
Source: https://data.bitcoinity.org/bitcoin/block_time/5y?f=m10&t=l
The delegated Proof-of-Stake (dPoS) consensus model is faster than PoW, but this speed is achieved simply by switching the load from all nodes to a very limited amount of nodes with powerful hardware. Technically it’s a blockchain, but it’s actually very close to a simple database. The dPoS blockchain is limited by the hardware used by its main nodes. In the case of EOS, 21 nodes can handle 3,000 transactions per second. If they buy more powerful equipment, they probably could be able to handle more, but they have a limit that is yet untested. To achieve higher scalability, the blockchain should be built around a different consensus model and there are some alternatives out there.
What is #MetaHash?
#MetaHash is a new highly scalable blockchain network for payments and decentralized applications that is optimized for a constant high load. It uses three technologies - #MetaPoS, #MetaSync and #TraceChain - to overcome the obstacles that limit the performance of the current blockchain networks and solve the problems of nodes centralization and block distribution. It achieves this by creating network maps, assigning dynamic roles to various nodes, and implementing a fragmented cryptographic proof as opposed to waiting for confirmation from every node.
All these features combined allow for a network to reach speeds of 50,000 transactions per second and have a block confirmation time of 3 seconds. That’s enough to handle the volume of two VISA networks plus that of PayPal. It’s also that’s enough to sustain any project requiring a high load, like an online game or a social network.
Source: https://static.metahash.org/docs/MetaHash_YellowPaper_EN.pdf?v=4
#MetaPoS consensus model
It’s a consensus model, an improved dPoS that incorporates five different roles for nodes that validates the transaction on five layers. It provides protection against network corruption, because the structure can be changed anytime if some nodes will become malicious, and gaining control of any layer doesn’t provide control over the blockchain.
The roles are assigned dynamically according to physical properties, such as memory, CPU pe

CoinSpeaker
Ponder: Exciting for Investors, Fun for Users
Ponder, a blockchain-based developer of gamified referrals platform, has already gained the support of some serious backers. The Times Group, through their strategic investment arm Brand Capital, and the Drapers, the famous Silicon Valley VC family, found their concept compelling and promising.
The idea behind the project is to make it fun and gratifying to refer friends and acquaintances to job openings, business opportunities, and even potential life partners - all areas in which we won’t mind a little help from a friend. If a referral proves successful, the referring person gets a financial reward. Brand Capital’s financial backing of Ponder will launch the startup in the Indian market and help it dramatically expand its user community.
The startup is being promoted by the Republic, a crowdfunding platform that was created in 2016 as an investor-friendly, easy to use platform to make investing in tech startups accessible to non-accredited investors.
Minimum investment in Ponder is $100, and investors are protected by the Republic’s Crowd SAFE instrument. Ponder has already received $1.6 million in seed funding from larger investors and is now opening this opportunity to a much broader group of small and large angel investors who find their idea timely.
The platform is made for busy individuals and companies that want to make quality connections. Unlike traditional matching applications, Ponder gets trusted friends and contacts to play matchmaker, using game mechanics and financial rewards as motivators. Ponder addresses a major issue in several important industries - dating, job referrals, and business referrals. All of these markets rely on algorithms when in fact human involvement can be instrumental.
Take dating, for instance. Even the smartest AI technology doesn’t know if John is really the right guy for Marsha. But someone who really knows and cares about Marsha, when they see John’s profile, will think of her and, using Ponder’s game interface, will connect the two profiles. If the match works, the referring friend gets $10 - and happy friends to boot. Isn’t it fun?!
The same principle applies to the project’s job and business referral components, only the matchmaker’s reward amount goes up, while the employer’s expense on new hires go way down. Ponder has already secured a strategic partnership deal with recruiter.com.
The startup’s potential addressable market is vast - $80 billion, so there is a lot of exciting work ahead for Ponder. But as Lao Tzu said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” In Ponder’s case, they are well on their way with their 80 thousand registered users who enjoy playing fun and challenging games while also putting their intelligence to good use and making some money.
The company’s public sale started on July 1, 2018 and will run until March 28th, 2019.
Ponder: Exciting for Investors, Fun for Users

In recent reports, Ripple, the leading blockchain firm in the fintech industry and GMT, the largest financial services firm with 250 branches, have walked into a partnership to mutually benefit the remittance sector. The Israeli firm will act as a representative for Ripple in the country to give it a global edge.
On its official website, GMT wrote that Ripple chose the company as its partner after a long process wherein the goal was to create a globally knitted financial system with new advancements. In GMT’s words:
“After a long and precise process GMT was chosen to be Ripple’s representative in Israel, by so joining Ripple, and its partners, in creating a global financial system, with high-end technology and values such as; transparency and affordable costs”
Furthermore, GMT will be connecting its business with several international partners of Ripple, such as AmericanExpress, MoneyGram, AKBANK, Earthport, CIBC and many more.
In terms of global adoption and partnerships, Ripple has shown much progress this year. Starting from the most recent achievement, XRP, the digital asset created by Ripple was chosen as the first settlement mechanism for Corda settler.
In another success story, Ripple executives were found to be interacting and agreeing on some regulatory framework-related points with the official of the International Monetary Fund [IMF].
Recently, Christine Lagarde, the IMF Chief delivered a speech wherein she admitted the fact that money, as we see at present, is changing. This was spoken in the context of the introduction of digital assets in the fintech space and the blockchain technology otherwise.
Furthermore, international banks such as Siam Commercial Bank, Thailand is also using Ripple’s technology as they recently integrated the multi-hop feature of RippleNet to their advantage. In fact, one of the products of RippleNet, xRapid, a product which was built to suit the requirements of speed and cost-effectiveness in the remittance sector also saw commercial adoption this October.
With all that is going for Ripple, the blockchain technology and the cryptocurrency space is also being benefited through widespread adoption.
The post Ripple gains more adoption; Israel’s leading player to join the game appeared first on AMBCrypto.

Latest Cardano News
There is a lot of interesting stuff going on in Cardano right now and although ADA prices are taking a hit, we cannot discount the excellent job they are doing as far as on chain development is concerned. To begin, they caught the attention of the blockchain community when they launched two smart contracting tools last week. These two—Plutus and Marlowe, were rigorously built tested before launch.
Today IOHK releases Plutus Platform, a smart contracts language for the Cardano blockchain. You can try out Plutus online via Plutus Playground. Read the blog to learn about Plutus, the Playground and other supporting documentation: https://t.co/LRDIM4z9xI
— Cardano Community (@Cardano) December 11, 2018
Moving on these are the kind of tools the community need as it bid to topple competitors. Remember, Cardano has ambitions to dominate the financial sector. Plutus and Marlowe would come in handy and companies can easily write and simulate smart contracts right on top of the Cardano blockchain before deployment.
Read: Linkedin: Blockchain Developer is 2018 Most Growing Job Sector (33X)
After seven release candidates and a huge amount of QA work, I'm pleased to announce that our best effort release date for Cardano 1.4 is December 18th. Daedalus users will get an in-client update notification next week. Thanks everyone for your patience and support
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) December 14, 2018
Days later, Charles Hoskinson, the co-founder and head of IOHK said the team is ready to launch Cardano 1.4 update on Dec 18 (tomorrow) after a “huge amount of QA work”. If anything, this is significant development and aside from storage capacity increase and other code fixes, Cardano 1.4 lay the rails for complete decentralization during Project Shelly.
ADA/USD Price Analysis
Week over week losses are mild and ADA is down seven percent against the USD in the last week. Like it has been the norm, sellers have an upper hand but after the bear breakout of Dec 6, ADA/USD found support at around 2.7 cents or Dec 7 lows.
Prices have since been consolidating within Dec7-9 high low with clear resistance at 3.3 cents. Price action between Dec 7-9 is significant because not only did it shore prices but backing these higher highs were high trade volumes.
Furthermore, ADA/USD prices largely confined within these high lows. From an effort versus results point of view, this is bullish and it’s because of this that we expect ADA to recover and even retest 3.3 cents.
If that is the case, chances are the resulting interest could propel prices back to Nov 29 highs of 4.5 cents. Otherwise, slips below 2.7 cents could see ADA collapse to new ATLs.
Assuming bulls reign, then this will be our ADA/USD trade plan:
Buy: 3.3 cents
Stop: 3 cents
First Target: 4.5 cents
Latest Tron News
Tron is blasting records, days after processing 2.53 million transactions and recording a 32,284 jump in the number of addresses, Justin Sun is now pointing to the stellar number of total transactions processed since launch.
Also Read: TRON [TRX] Exceptional Network Performance: 2.53MM Txs/day
Still gambling sites dominate the top 10 with TronBet a stand out.
#TRON has reached 100 million transactions today. #TRX $TRX pic.twitter.com/HrDFQxn6Te
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) December 16, 2018
The game has been played more than 10,000 times and has paid out more than 10 million in TRXs. Together with TronDice, the surge in the number of daily transactions helped Tron eclipse Ethereum as the most active platform.
TRX/USD Price Analysis
After EOS and Binance coin, TRX is the third top performer in the last week. It is stable in the last 24 hours and from candlestick arrangement, prices could print higher in coming days.
As laid out in previous TRX/USD trade plan, bulls will only be in charge if and only if there are solid gains above 1.7 cents. Before then, the first wave of TRX buyers should enter the market once there is a high-volume break above 1.4 cents or Dec 12 highs.
This could pave way for price expansion towards 1.5 cents and even 1.7 cents. If not and prices collapse below Dec 12 lows of 1.2 cents and odds are TRX will sink towards Jan 2018 lows.
This is our short term TRX/USD trade plan:
Buy: 1.4 cents
Stop: 1.2 cents
Target: 1.7 cents, 2 cents
All Charts courtesy of Trading View.
This is not Investment Advice. Do your own Research.
The post Altcoins Daily Preview: Cardano 1.4 Update is Massive, Tron Blasting Transaction Records appeared first on Ethereum World News.

Alter Verse, a gaming and world-building multiverse where users can play and develop an infinite number of interrelated games and worlds has joined the Enjin (ENJ) blockchain gaming ecosystem. Enjin made this announcement yesterday via Twitter, stating that Alter Verse would incorporate its blockchain assets into 17 interconnected gaming worlds. Alter Verse’s design allows players, developers, and streamers to monetize their activities through its in-game token dubbed ‘Arn.’ The tweet also unveiled that Alter Verse is set to launch its first game titled ‘Disruption’ in Q1 2019. (KE)

Endless Game, a blockchain game company, reportedly has received a total investment of $7.5 million from IOST's subsidiaries Blue Hill Foundation and other organizations. After this round of financing, Endless Game will set up new businesses on the basis of retaining its original business, focusing on the development and distribution of blockchain games. Besides, the head of Endless Game said that the existing products will be migrated to IOST's main net when it is full-ready, and they will also participate in the election of IOST main network node. (RL)

Bitcoin is still trending lower inside its descending channel that has been holding on so far this month. Price bounced off the bottom and has pulled up to the top, which is holding as resistance once more.
Should sellers return, bitcoin could find its way back down to the nearby support levels marked by the Fibonacci extension tool. The 38.2% level lines up with the swing low at the $3,200 area while the 61.8% level seems closer to the channel support at $3,100. Stronger selling pressure could take bitcoin down to the 78.6% extension at $3,060 or the full extension at $2,973.9.
The 100 SMA is below the longer-term 200 SMA to indicate that the path of least resistance is to the downside or that the selloff is more likely to resume than to reverse. However, price is trading above the 100 SMA dynamic inflection point to signal the presence of bullish pressure. Price could still attempt a break past the channel top and test the 200 SMA dynamic inflection point around $3,450 next.
RSI is on the move down and has a bit of ground to cover before hitting the oversold region. This suggests that sellers could stay in the game and could push for at least a test of the mid-channel area of interest around $3,300. Stochastic has already dipped into the oversold region to signal that sellers are exhausted and buyers might take over.
Bitcoin bulls have found some hope as pro-bitcoin Mick Mulvaney joined Trump’s cabinet as his Chief of Staff. Although not directly involved with regulation or other potential industry developments, it seems that buyers are just hopping on any positive update at the moment. Still, it looks like the gains might be short-lived as buyers are also quick to book gains at nearby resistance levels.
The post Bitcoin (BTC) Price Analysis: Another Retracement or Reversal? appeared first on Ethereum World News.

Crypto, Bitcoin Market Is “Just A Bit Backward”
Michael Casey, the chairman of CoinDesk’s advisory board, a well-recognized author, and the co-founder of Network Effects Media, sat down with Cheddar, an up and coming business media outlet, on Thursday. The crypto-friendly outlet called on the industry insider to discuss the state of the crypto industry today, and a number of unique topics were brought to the table.
A Cheddar anchor, staving away from asking the outlet’s normal round of questions, asked Casey if the way that crypto investors value digital assets, such as Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH), are putting cryptocurrencies into a crisis. Responding passionately, the crypto proponent, who regularly contributes to CoinDesk, noted that this market’s valuation models are “all just a bit backward.”
Elaborating on what he meant, Casey noted that cryptocurrencies and related technologies are seen as a way to disintermediate ecosystems and to curb centralized entities. But now, the way that we value these blockchain-based assets is quite reminiscent of how traditional markets are run — a big no-no for diehard decentralists.
He added that we’re benchmarking crypto’s performance of fiat, or more specifically, we’re continually denoting BTC’s value in dollar signs, rather than the iconic ₿(itcoin). In other words, he said that much of the crypto market is focused on a successful exit into fiat, rather than maintaining skin in the game, so to speak. Casey added that this causes incentives to get misaligned, as investors look for profit, instead of ousting the often corrupt powers that be.
Case in point, the CEO of Bitpay recently told CNBC that much of the Bitcoin price is based on speculation, rather than legitimate use in the real world, especially in the day-to-day.
Bitcoin Fundamentals Boom — Network Value
Although Casey didn’t touch on how exactly to value cryptocurrencies, a growing theme in this ecosystem has been the use of Network Value to assess this nascent industry. Most notably, the concepts of network value have been utilized by analysts and researchers to determine what the “true value” of a cryptocoin, like BTC, is.
Just recently, Tom Lee, the head of research at Fundstrat, told his clients in a note that the fair value for BTC is $13,800 to $14,800, specifically due to the active wallet addresses, the amount of BTC transferred, and the asset’s unique characteristics of being a deflationary currency that is sovereign, censorship-resistant, borderless, and immutable. This forecast, interestingly, lines up with his overly optimistic end of year prediction, as reported by Ethereum World News previously.
While Lee was quickly lambasted for his call, his optimistic outlook on Bitcoin doesn’t come unwarranted. Anthony Pompliano, better known as “Pomp” to the crypto industry, recently spoke on the fact that the network that backs BTC is on the up-and-up, even while prices remain depressed.
Pomp, a former Snapchat and Facebook employee, exclaimed that at its core, Bitcoin is the world’s most secure transaction settlement layer, so value in BTC will always exist. In another piece, the Morgan Creek Digital partner noted that the growing transaction count, falling transactions fees, year-on-year hashrate growth, and the unprecedented creation of active nodes is another reason to be bullish on Bitcoin.
In October, even Joseph Lubin, the founder of ConsenSys and co-founder of Ethereum, told CNBC’s “First On” segment that while crypto is in the midst of a “bust,” fundamentals are “booming.” The serial entrepreneur, who roomed with Mike Novogratz at Princeton, even noted this budding ecosystem is the strongest it has ever been, indicating that the decline of speculative interest hasn’t irked true believers of this innovation.
Title Image Courtesy of Jamie Street on Unsplash
The post CoinDesk Advisor: Crypto, Bitcoin (BTC) Valuation Models Are Wrong appeared first on Ethereum World News.

Predictions from respected corners of the mainstream financial world - GP Bullhound and Saxo Bank - could be good news for the crypto industry and its status as a valid and profitable asset class.
US advisory and investment firm, GP Bullhound (GPB), under the subhead “Cryptocurrency will Grow Up”, concurs with the balance of opinion among analysts covering crypto, that institutional money will lead the recovery.
GPB’s prediction report is bullish:
“We are yet to see the best of cryptocurrencies. Blockchain activity is picking up with even traditional financial institutions ensuring they do not get left behind. 2019 should be the year institutional capital flows into cryptocurrency, with previous obstructions and tight regulations lifted,”
Last year the tech-focused investment firm correctly foresaw the crypto implosion, which in hindsight some might say was not too difficult to predict. It did however put a number on its premonition, arguing that a 90% correction would take place, although it has been surprised by the speed of the collapse.
Nine out of 10 of its 2018 predictions have proven to be correct, so its 2019 crypto recovery prediction should not be dismissed as just more hot air from investment firms trying to protect their investments.
And for institutions it’s not just the attraction of the financial gains of buying coins at the bottom (wherever and whenever that might be), but investment in distributed ledger tech more broadly:
“We predict 2019 will be the year of institutional capital inflow into blockchain, which will not be solely financially motivated, but backed by increasing demand we see on the corporate and family office side and their desire to build positions. Initially this will happen through funds, equity investing into blockchain technology projects as well as financial instruments and derivative products related to major cryptocurrencies.”
Intercontinental Exchange’s Bakkt platform is likely to be one of the critical on-ramps for “institutional capital inflow”, as too might be the small number of regulated instruments that currently exist.
These include the Bitcoin Investment Trust from Barry Silbert’s Grayscale Investments (although it trades at a premium to its net asset value which would be off-putting); the exchange traded notes (these are debt instruments not ETFs) provided by CoinShares’ XBT Provider Bitcoin and Ethereum tracker products and newer offerings such as the Amun Crypto Market Basket Index ETP, which recently launched the first regulated crypto index fund in Europe on the Swiss main market.
Amun’s product currently has the second-highest turnover of all exchange traded products on the Swiss market.
Add to that the growing interest in security token offerings (STOs) that EWN reported on in November, and the entry routes are coming into view, and GPB agrees:
“There is a massive wave of fully compliant security token offerings (“STOs”) lined up and also the developments around tokenization of assets (“TOAs”) is extensive - both are expected to continue to raise the bar on market standards very fast...”
However, as GPB underlines, institutional entry still faces the issues around regulatory clarity, liquidity and custody.
Nevertheless, Olga Feldmeier, chief executive of Smart Valor, which is building a security token platform, commenting on GP Bullhound’s bullish stance, noted: “Cryptocurrencies will continue to innovate beyond the well-known bitcoin and Ethereum, and we will see many more coin and payment products emerging. All that will clear the way for mass adoption, which we will see in the second half of 2019.”
GP Bullhound’s ones to watch
GPB’s companies/partnerships to watch are:
Alibaba, AWS/Qtum, Binance, Bitfury, Blockstack, Bloomberg/Galaxy, Coinbase, Gemini, Soros Fund Management, Goldman Sachs, IBM/Stellar, Ledger, Revolut, NYSE Bakkt, Rockefeller/Venrock, t3, Yale, Stanford University, Harvard University, MIT, Fidelity
GPB’s Coins to watch:
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero and Stellar.
The year blockchain gets out of the labs
For those that were starting to lose faith in blockchain tech ever emerging from the fintech labs of the many financial institutions running pilots, GPB confirms that many are still on track to emerge into the wild, as corporate FOMO asserts itself.
“Underneath the surface, activity in Distributed Ledger Technology (“DLT”) is in full speed, even within financial institutions.”
One financial adoption story (it’s not all about Ripple, which doesn’t get a mention from GPB) that hasn’t had much coverage was the announcement from Calastone that it will be moving its global fund transaction business on to blockchain. That will have the effect of reducing costs for mutual fund investors, assuming the savings are passed on by fund giants such as Vanguard, BlackRock and Fidelity.
Calastone is no small fry - it has trading volumes valued at $80 billion per month, with 1,300 institutions part of its network in 34 markets around the world.
Julie

The level of professionalism and communication on your part isnt overlooked. We all believe in what you're doing and your level of daily, weekly, and monthly transparency is not only refreshing, but uplifting.
Each video is a pleasure to learn about the inner-details of the project. Your knowledge-base and passion for each piece only makes us more passionate and excited.
We know 2018 has been tough, but all great, world changing ideas are. This has been the year that weeds out all the fakes and gimmicks. Every coin & project has and will be tested. I feel like Cardano has passed its initial tests and believe it will rise to the occasion for any and all future obstacles. Honestly, i believe we are more focused & stronger than ever before.
So, once again, thank you for all of your hard work & dedication. It's an honor to be a part / witness this project in its early stages. This project and team have the right mindset for what it takes to lead, innovate, and push the world to new heights. Not only that, but it's starting in the right place(s) to help the people & societies that probably need it the most.
Cardano 2019!!! Lets do this! The game is to change the world. We have all the right players, the abilities, the attitude, and an inspirational coach to show us the way. Will you still be there when it's time to take the #1 spot of pioneering & revolutionizing an entire new age of technology and freedom?
I will be.

President Trump seems to be highly interested in the potential of blockchain technologies and the benefits of using cryptocurrencies for the country’s economy. Yesterday, he addressed the nation via Twitter announcing the appointment of Mick Mulvaney as the White House’s new acting Chief of Staff.
Mulvaney joins the list of politicians with pro-Bitcoin orientations to whom Mr. Trump has given important political responsibilities within his cabinet.
“I am pleased to announce that Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management & Budget, will be named Acting White House Chief of Staff, replacing General John Kelly, who has served our Country with distinction. Mick has done an outstanding job while in the Administration,” President Trump tweeted.
I am pleased to announce that Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management & Budget, will be named Acting White House Chief of Staff, replacing General John Kelly, who has served our Country with distinction. Mick has done an outstanding job while in the Administration....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 14, 2018
Mulvaney: a Pro-Bitcoin Guy With Temporary but Strategic Responsibilities
Mulvaney’s role as John Kelly’s replacement refreshes a bit the way of doing politics inside the White House. Kelly’s conservative vision contrasts somewhat with Mulvaney, who on several occasions has expressed his enthusiasm for the use of Bitcoin and other Blockchain technologies.
According to CNN, Mr. Mulvaney will have two parallel positions: On the one hand, he will have his regular job as director of the Office of Management and Budget while assuming these new responsibilities in an “acting role.”
Trump disguised the temporary nature of these functions, commenting that his services are official until the end of the year although he did not hide his enthusiasm for working in conjunction with him.
....I look forward to working with him in this new capacity as we continue to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! John will be staying until the end of the year. He is a GREAT PATRIOT and I want to personally thank him for his service!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 14, 2018
IS Trump Playing a Slow Game of Crypto-Chess?
Previously, Trump included Elad Roisman and Hester Peirce as SEC members in a decision that clearly aimed to modify some positions within the SEC. Both are known supporters of the use of cryptocurrencies and have defended the potential of blockchain technologies as mechanisms to boost the national economy.
From left to right: Hester Peirce, Elad Roisman and Mick Mulvaney
Like Roisman and Peirce, Mulvaney played an essential role in the promotion of blockchain technologies by creating the Congressional Blockchain Caucus, an organization dedicated to promoting the study of blockchain technologies within the Congress with the aim of developing a series of legal instruments adapted to this area.
In a speech motivating other members of Congress to join the caucus, Mulvaney had already shown his passion for blockchain technologies:
“Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize the financial services industry, the U.S. economy, and the delivery of government services,”
The post Pro-Bitcoin Mick Mulvaney Joins Donald Trump’s Cabinet as Acting Chief of Staff appeared first on Ethereum World News.

Bitcasino.io is celebrating the Christmas season with loyal customers and the incoming ones by giving players the opportunity of spinning the wheel of wonders and win great and fantastic prizes.
Festive Celebration
The Bitcasino promo which gives people the opportunity of going home with different prizes will end on 23rd of December.
The daily rewards include 10 free spins on the Christmas carol slot and 10 free chips on Satoshi Atlantic City Blackjack.
Also available are a range of cash prizes to be won on a daily basis, some of which includes:
100 percent reload bonus on next deposit up to uB 10,000
Cashback of up to uB 10,000 on losses
A rebate of up to uB 6000 on a wager
A uB 5000 cash reward
Weekly prizes are also available on the wheel of fortune; they include a trip voucher worth ub 1,000,000 and an iPhone.
To cap it all up, all participants will be entered into a promo draw on December 24th for a chance to win the ultimate Christmas present-a Royal Caribbean cruise.
All have equal opportunities to spin the wheel, with additional spins-up to four per person- earned for every 200,000 uBTC players wager during the dates of the promo.
Tauri Tiiitsar, Head of Casino at Bitcasino.io revealed that:
“We want to do something extra special for our users this holiday season, and we think the wheel of wonders is one of the spectacular promotions we have ever held.’’
The wheel of wonders is coming at a strategic period, following the release of the new and improved Bitcasino site. Users can now enjoy some of the fastest loading times while playing at Bitcasino, which is faster, at least eight times more than that of Bitcasinos major competitors.
Tauri continues:
We welcome everyone to take a spin of the wheel, and with a bit of luck take home an early Christmas present.’’
In a bid to further satisfy its users, Bitcasino is working round the clock to improve most of its features, in line with the feedback received from players.
More on Bitcasino
Bitcasino was founded in 2014, as part of the Coingaming Group, Bitcasino is unarguably one of the biggest bitcoin-led casinos in the world, with over 1,400 games that cut across all variety of games that are enjoyed by all game lovers.
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The post Bitcasino.io Launches Wheels of Wonders for The Festive Season appeared first on ZyCrypto.

The Tron project published its Dapp weekly report on Dec. 14th in which it highlighted key milestones such as the launch of two decentralized exchanges (DEXs).
Tron is doing a good job in publicizing its growing Dapp ecosystem, and this will potentially direct more users to the platform.
Tron managed to establish a cooperation with CropBytes.
The popularity of Tron’s Dapps is shown by the increase in the number of transaction volume for Dapps.
Two Tron-Based DEX’s Launched
Two decentralized exchanges based on Tron were launched during the week.
TRX Market was launched on Dec. 12th. It was developed by the Tron community. The new DEX supports three tokens - GOC, BET, and FUN - and they are all paired with Tron’s TRX token.
“It is the TRC20 order matching exchange by the Tronscan Team after TRC10 Bancor exchange,” read part of the report.
GOC is another exchange that was launched during the week and is described as the “first TRC20 and TRC10 exchange of Tron.’
The TRC10 exchange is similar to Tronscan DEX which shares the same principal code, and the only difference is the UI. GOC’s TRC20 exchange functions as an order matching exchange and its native token GOC is listed on the platform.
GOC tokens have a total circulation of 10 billion and two methods are used to maintain the intrinsic value of the token.
The first method is to repurchase or burn the tokens using 20 percent of the profit until 5 billion tokens are burnt.
The second method involves the platform sharing half of the service fee with GOC holders once a week - on Fridays.
Nine TRC20 tokens were listed on Tronscan and the majority of them were issued through Dapp projects.
1,500 TRC10 have been listed on Tronscan, and this number keeps on growing. This is because it is easy for users to create a TRC10 token - they need to have 1024 TRX.
However, it is a little more difficult to create a TRC20 token as the users are required to write smart contracts. As more Tron exchanges are launched:
“Tokens of Dapp projects will have higher liquidity and Dapps will have more active users, and the trading volume of the entire TRON network will be taken to a new level.”
Transactions, Dapps, and Partnerships
The 24-hour transaction number for Dapps increased by 48 percent from last week to reach 1.04 million.
On the other hand, the 24-hour trading volume increased significantly by 151 percent to hit 640 million TRX.
The significant increase in both indexes is a clear indication of the popularity of Tron’s Dapps.
Tron’s cooperation with CropBytes will see the later build a virtual farming game on Tron. The game is yet to be officially launched and is only in the pre-sale stage
Coin War, a game developed by FCC has been updated and now interacts with smart contracts - allowing the Dapp to fully decentralized.
TRON Releases Dapp Weekly Report: Two Tron-based Decentralized Exchanges Launched was originally found on [blokt] - Blockchain, Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

After much deliberation, the team at the DDEX decentralized exchange has decided to fork the Ox protocol that is the backbone of the exchange. Tian Li, CEO of DDEX, made the announcement two days ago via a Medium post.
Mr. Li praised the efforts of the Ox team in delivering a high quality, useful code with smart contracts that DDEX has used to become one of the largest decentralized exchanges on the Ethereum network. But due to diverging future plans, the team at DDEX has decided to rewrite a major part of the codebase as part of their ‘fork’.
Tian Li went on to further explain their recent move to fork the Ox protocol and remove ZRX to create Hydro.
Although we were thrilled to see 0x tackle such a wide range of important issues, our perspective of what’s most urgent diverged. Being on the front-lines, it is painfully apparent that most DEXs today still are plagued by rudimentary problems such as order collision, front-running, and poor liquidity.
After much deliberation, we’ve decided to fork the 0x protocol.
Although we are using the term “fork” to give proper credit, we rewrote a large portion of the codebase. We plan to ship a new order schema, an engine capable of true matching, robust market orders, and a fundamentally different liquidity sharing model. The ZRX token will be removed as well, because fee-based tokens create unnecessary friction.
We are calling this new protocol Hydro, to emphasize that liquidity matters above everything else.
Do or Die for DDEX
According to DDEX’s website, the decentralized exchange is currently in the process of migrating to Hydro. In the medium post, the CEO of DDEX, acknowledged that if the new hydro protocol does not deliver, DDEX will be outclassed and quickly become irrelevant.
About the Ox Protocol
The Ox protocol facilitates the exchange of ERC20 tokens, game items and other digital assets on the Ethereum network. The protocol enables developers to focus on building while Ox handles the exchange. By sharing a standard API, relayers can aggregate liquidity pools, creating network effects around liquidity that compound as more relayers come online.
Use case of Ox include:
Gaming and collectibles
Prediction markets
Order Books
Decentralized loans
Stable tokens
Relayers is a name used to refer to exchanges using the protocol. This name is preferred rather than the common term of ‘exchanges’. Current relayers using the Ox protocol and their 24 hour trade volume can be found below.
DDEX - $274,353 in 24 hour trade volume
Radar Relay - $61,290 in 24 hour trade volume
STAR BIT - $3,704
Token Jar - $307
Paradex - $305
The Ocean - $26
What are your thoughts on DDEX forking the Ox protocol, removing ZRX and creating Hydro? Please let us know in the comment section below.
The post DDEX To Fork the Ox Protocol, Remove ZRX and Name their New Protocol Hydro appeared first on Ethereum World News.

Veteran game creator Brian Fargo has launched Robot Cache, reportedly the world's first marketplace for video games based on the blockchain. Currently, the blockchain-powered competitor to Steam has signed up seven hundred games and twenty-two publishers, although it is scheduled for launch in 2019. With Rober Cache, users can make money by re-selling their games and can mine or buy virtual token "IRON." Due to stringent SEC regulations, Robot Cache will not offer an ICO. Instead, it will use virtual token IRON, accessible to the platform's users only. Some of the publishers that have been signed up include Ci Games, Dankie, 1C Publishing, Headup, and Bigben Interactive among others. (KE)

Robot Cache, co-created by Brian Fargo, plans on being the first blockchain-based digital marketplace for video games and main competitor to Steam. The platform for PC games is scheduled for launch at an unspecified time in 2019 and has reportedly already signed up 22 publishers and 700 games to be available once launched. The platform has committed to giving game developers/publishers around 95% of the value of new game sales and plans to offer the option for game users to re-sell their game purchases and mine a “virtual currency” called IRON when their machines aren’t in use. (JF)

Co-founded by veteran game developer Brian Fargo, Robot Cache will purportedly be the first blockchain-based digital marketplace for video games. Brian Fargo Launches Blockchain-Based Steam Competitor The PC games platform is set to launch sometime in 2019 but has already signed up 22 publishers and 700 games for its blockchain-based competitor to Steam. Robot Cache

Canyudo, a blockchain-based social tasking, marketplace, and event organization app has released its product in closed beta ahead of its upcoming launch in January 2019. The Canyudo app will first launch in Hong Kong followed by a global roll-out. Per the firm, the app is a virtual town square where users can advertise jobs, events, tasks, or items for sale. Users would also enjoy instant crypto and fiat transactions. The firm's founder and CEO, Steve Biddick said they use game design, the blockchain, and an efficient user interface to achieve their goals. (KE)

The cryptocurrency market is undergoing changes with respect to cryptocurrencies’ standing almost every day. Yesterday, Litecoin [LTC] took over Bitcoin SV [BSV] and moved to the eighth position. Later in the day, Litecoin [LTC] crossed Bitcoin Cash [BCH], to rank seventh on the CoinMarketList.
Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin expressed his joy of overtaking BCH by retweeting a gif doing rounds on Twitter. Lee tweeted:
Who needs TV when you’ve got cryptotainment? https://t.co/PN23ZzlBf9 pic.twitter.com/mJIpmjlE2F
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) December 15, 2018
The flappening refers to a previous tweet by the creator of LTC that dates back to February 25. Lee tweeted:
Source: Twitter
In early 2018, when Ethereum boomed, many speculated it to overtake the biggest cryptocurrency Bitcoin [BTC]. However, Lee, the Ethereum skeptic denied the possibility and instead, said that his cryptocurrency, LTC, could overtake Bitcoin Cash [BCH].
The Litecoin community responded to Lee by launching an LTC vs BCH data aggregator called Flappening.watch, which was in line with Lee’s ‘Flappening’. They also used Lee’s mascot, a chicken in an armor. Even though BCH was way ahead of LTC for most of the year, it ultimately crossed BCH on Friday.
Lee had also tweeted about merchants accepting Lightning network payment. He tweeted saying:
“Even Litecoin will soon have more than 1000 merchants accepting LN payments! Thanks @CoinGatecom!”
On Friday, BCH started to surrender and fell below its support point. Meanwhile, LTC started recovering and bounced off its lowest $22.5 standing. Lee pointed at his prediction and took to Twitter to share his joy with a tweet which contained three emojis, a chicken, flying dollar bill and a rocket added to a gif.
Flappening.watch reported LTC to have registered a market cap of $5 billion higher than that of BCH and had 384% more active addresses, 340% higher daily transactions, and 288% more in trading volume. CoinMarketCap reflected this change in the standings of the two coins with LTC on the seventh position.
At the time of reporting, LTC was valued at $24.08 with a market cap of $1.4 billion and grew by 2.27% within 24 hours. The coin registered a 24-hour trade volume of $328 million. The coin recorded a growth on 0.04% over an hour, at the time of press.
However, LTC and BCH are playing the game of power and are constantly undergoing changes, which is impacting their standings on cryptocurrency list. As on December 15, the coin plunged and was back to the eighth position, yet ahead of BSV. The coin recorded an overall fall of 6.09% at the time of reporting.
The post Litecoin [LTC] creator Charlie Lee’s ‘Flappening’ prediction materializes; LTC overtakes BCH to become seventh-largest token appeared first on AMBCrypto.

Atletico Mineiro, Brazil's premier league football club has rolled out a fan token called GaloCoin. GaloCoin is based on FootCoin, a platform built on Ethereum blockchain. This fan token will enable fans to buy game tickets and official attire, and be part of discount programs. Users can utilize the crypto token by purchasing at least 50 GaloCoins (approximately $13). Recently, utility tokens have gained traction among soccer teams. French Club Paris Saint-Germain and Italy's club Juventus are the most recent clubs to launch fan tokens. (VK)

The gloves are off in the crypto community, and the bench-clearing brawl can begin. Monero Core Lead Maintainer Riccardo “FluffyPony” Spagni has spotted signs that Basic Attention Token is in fact centralized, a word which no crypto project wants to hear. On the Magical Crypto Friends show on Youtube, Spagni suggested that BAT, which is integrated with Brave browser, is centralized. Many dApps, he adds, are much more centralized than they should be.
Brave is growing in popularity and was recently named the default browser on a smartphone made by HTC. Users like it because by opting in the browser lets you “earn” BAT and share it with content providers; future upgrades will allow users to earn crypto by engaging with ad content. But this is where Spagni starts to swing.
As the lead developer for the dark web’s favorite privacy coin, Spagni observed that someone could game the system and only pretend to be engaging in content on Brave.
According to Spagni, Brave relies on something known as “proof of browsing,” which is a process to determine “what is true and what isn’t true.” On top of that, there’s a clawback that prevents participants from withdrawing their airdropped BAT tokens until they complete KYC and AML requirements. All of this control is what leads Spagni to believe that BAT is centralized, saying:
At the end of the day, it’s no different from a database.
Litecoin creator Charlie Lee was on the broadcast too, and brought up the fact that the only reason BAT was created was because no one would give the Brave team free bitcoin to airdrop.
For his part, Brave CEO Brendan Eich conceded that the browser is “semi-centralized” in an interview with Hard Fork. On Twitter, Eich acknowledged that a lack of bitcoin liquidity was partially responsible for BAT’s creation, as well as high bitcoin fees.
Lee said the Brave team was basically looking to “create money out of thin air so they can airdrop it.”
Sounds a bit like the Fed.
XMR Price Falls To A New Yearly Low
Monero is one of the most privacy-focused cryptos, for which AML and KYC features are considered a red flag. Not to mention the possibility that Spagni wanted to draw attention away from the XMR price, which has recently fallen to a new low for the year at approximately $41 on CryptoCompare. But as with many projects in 2018, the price is not necessarily an indication of activity surrounding Monero.
Switzerland-based Bity has announced that users can now buy XMR from its crypto ATMs with cash. One of Bity’s top selling points is that there’s no need to “verify your identity or register an account,” which reflects the features with which Spagni took issue, with respect to BAT.
Meanwhile, an app dubbed Bail Bloc openly siphons some of a user’s processing power and directs it towards mining Monero. Bail Bloc touts Monero’s features including “secure, private and untraceable.” The funds are then converted into USD and donated to an Immigrant Bail Fund “to post bond for people in ICE detention.”
Apparently you need a different BAT to knock off a few bails.
An email to Brave was not returned in time for publication. We will update the story if we hear back from them.
The author is not invested in any digital currencies mentioned in the article but does hold investments in cryptocurrencies.
The post Monero Dev FluffyPony Swings BAT At Coinbase-Listed Giants appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Nick Spanos is an early adopter and innovator in the blockchain space. He is best known for launching Bitcoin Center NYC, the world’s first live cryptocurrency exchange, in 2013, right next to the New York Stock Exchange — as immortalized in the Netflix documentary “Banking on Bitcoin.” As part of Bitcoin Magazine’s series of interviews and op eds leading up to the 10th Anniversary of Bitcoin, Nick shares his thoughts an early Bitcoin adopter.Before Bitcoin, I worked tirelessly for liberty-minded political candidates for many years. These candidates, the most prominent of whom was Dr. Ron Paul, spoke out against the Federal Reserve Bank because of its role in inflating the money supply which devalued the life savings of hard-working people. In almost every case, the mass media would sharply (and often unfairly) attack the image of the candidate with half-truths and misinformation, decimating our poll numbers, until they were sure that we would be defeated on Election Day. No matter how hard we worked or how much money we raised, we were no match for what I call the political bosses of today, the mainstream media.After two decades of struggle, I thought I had wasted my life fighting unwinnable battles. Then one day, I read the Bitcoin white paper. I read it half a dozen times and I thought, “Finally, I have a weapon that cannot be destroyed on Election Day.”Bitcoin for me is not an instrument for financial investment. Bitcoin for me is a declaration of our monetary independence.When I started the Bitcoin Center in 2013, I had a flourishing real estate business in downtown New York. I had an established career in developing technologies for political campaigns. Because of bitcoin’s reputation in the mainstream media back then, I knew that many of my relationships would be destroyed if I emerged as a public figure in the cryptocurrency space. When I launched the center, a press release was sent out revealing me as the founder even though I never wanted that information to go public. Immediately, concerned friends and family started calling me, asking me what I was getting myself into and wondering if I had lost my mind. Bitcoin was for illicit activities on the internet, they told me. This is nothing but video game money, said others. My life mission of personal freedom was more powerful than anything anyone could ever say to me.I knew I had to bring Bitcoin out of the back alleys and onto Wall Street for the world to take it seriously. So, for many years, by day, we taught reporters, stockbrokers, students, technologists and tour groups about bitcoin, for free, and by night, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were traded on the world’s first live cryptocurrency trading floor (also for free). Every day, we made our stand, not knowing which government agency might walk through the doors or what papers they might serve us, or even worse. Yet we stood there, like David with his slingshot up against the modern day Goliaths, in an open and notorious manner, unwavering and unafraid. For years, we fought tooth and nail and spread the ethos of decentralization far and wide, with a team of lawyers at the ready. Licenses were created against us to thwart the rate at which we were growing. Agencies worked tirelessly to figure out how to turn people off from adopting bitcoin, and yet the little bitcoin thrived against all odds.Then one day, we looked up and we realized something: Many big companies are attempting to bamboozle us. Microsoft, IBM, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, even Google and Facebook — overnight, all these goliaths of centralization are attempting to enter “blockchain.” They are touting what they call “blockchain,” but what they are actually peddling is another iteration of centralized control in, what is for many of them, a last ditch effort to stay relevant.Many people in our community were excited by the invasion of these goliaths because they had thought it might lend us legitimacy. But that’s only because they had been brainwashed into thinking that our community was otherwise illegitimate. We, the open, permissionless blockchain believers, are the legitimate ones.The reality is that the educational work we began at the Bitcoin Center is more important now than ever before as we continue to teach people the true meaning of decentralization. As many have said, and as I have said in forums in dozens of countries throughout the world, from Saudi Arabia to Sri Lanka: There can be no transparency, immutability or accountability without decentralization.The internet grew by leaps and bounds because it was permissionless. A permissioned internet would probably have been nothing in comparison. The same is true for the blockchain. Despite these powerful institutions and regulators who are shoving their centralized agendas down our throats, I am confident in the resilience and fortitude of our ever growing community to withstand these attacks. If we don’t all stand for something, we will fall for anything. We ha

IBM is a bright spot among fortune 500 companies with a vision for using blockchain to solve critical business challenges. Building on a history of deep experience in the transaction business, IBM is working today to take blockchain tech to the mainstream and find innovative ways to build on these trustless systems.
Nitin Gaur, Director of IBM Blockchain Labs, joined Crypto Insider for a chat about what IBM is doing with blockchain, how artificial intelligence can be utilized in this space, and the history of IBM when it comes to building on payment and transaction systems.
We present to you the full transcript of our chat and hope you will get a fuller understanding of how blockchain technology is being put to use at a corporate level to solve global challenges.
Watch in the embed above or watch on YouTube.
Full transcript of Nitin Gaur’s interview with Crypto Insider’s Nathan Ashworth:
Nathan: So, one thing is, with most Fortune 500 companies today, they see how important Blockchain is, they maybe see the potential, but IBM is kind of an exception, you have jumped on this, probably for several years now. When did this first get on the radar, at IBM, that you decided as a company that you were going to start investing in this heavily?
NITIN GAUR: Yeah, so, it is an interesting story because I used to run mobile payments, for us, in terms of figuring out what it means to handle, you know, the whole journey from - and we are still in that phase - going from the normal traditional payments rails to simplifying it, an economic inclusion agenda of many companies is going after mobile payments. In that journey in early 2012, me and my team we met with about 65 plus different payment processors in the world. And in that conversation Blockchain began to surface up in many of those. And some of us went back and said, okay we need to figure this out, because it’s Bitcoin, and many of us were just curious, but we knew what Bitcoin was.
We went and researched the hell out of this, we spoke to IBM research, we had an early project of Blue Coin inside of IBM, this is earlier on, no one really knows about it, but we did have that project, but you know, it is one thing to have a technical project, it is another to make it commercial. You need business case, you need investments, you need some of these things. And I think, late 2013, when some of our senior client executives began to ask us about our point of view, was when we got into it, and then we announced to the world that we are going fully with it. There is something else you should know, the reason why we got into it, it’s because it is not just a panacea, it is not just cool tech, that we have to do it. If you look at IBM’s business, we have been in transaction systems since the inception of transaction systems, this goes back to our very old business of mainframe leading to all the database technology, all the CICS and base technologies.
So, if Blockchain would be the next generation transaction system, which is what it is destined to be, then we are as much disrupted as the financial institutions that we talk about being disrupted, and many other industries. So, I think it’s an important step, an important investment and technology in my opinion. So, that’s when we announced to the world and we haven’t looked back, I think it is working well for us as well.
Nathan: So, the most recent development I saw was the World Wire service, but I am sure there are other things. But can you talk about that a little bit in relation to Stellar and how that works?
NITIN GAUR: Yeah. So, a few things on this. One is, what we need to talk about in the industry is protocols, which means that at this point in time, there are many companies working on different technology platforms, different protocols, there’s layer one, layer two for optimization, layer three for interoperability between protocols, similar to what we have seen early days with the internet. We had basic link layer protocols, and we have IP which was abstracted and then you have application level protocols which made the internet to what it is today.
We are in the similar level of infancy and, so, from our perspective, some execs thought that we should not put all eggs in one basket which, as you know, we were heavily invested and one of the founding members of the Linux Foundation, which runs an open source community driven project called HyperLedger. So a few execs embarked on this payment network, which was based on Stellar.
So, Stellar is the underlying technology, what is important is not the rails, which is the network behind the scenes, but what is important is what we are trying to achieve with World Wire, and the ability for us to be able to fence off provides a more regulated way to transact, be able to introduce newer business models by introduction of what we call ‘stable coin’ which is one way to digitize Fiat in the regulated way. I think it opens up a lot of horizons and a lot of business models wh

Max Keiser once again shared his thoughts with Bitcoinist on the latest happenings in France, how Russia may use Bitcoin for its strategic reserves, and why Bitcoin is king while altcoins should be “left to dickheads like Jamie Dimon.”
Bitcoinist: What’ have you been up to lately? Anything interesting in the works from Max Keiser?
Max Keiser: What’s new? Our new series on RT, “GONZO Max and Stacy,” debuting on December 23. We’re back on the road barnstorming across America. Stacy gets trapped in a pit filled with alligators in Florida and you won’t believe what happens, but it involves Max on a zip-line.
What we discovered on this GONZO journey is that Trump is as American as Apple Pie and the Fourth of July. So-called progressives like my old friend Alec Baldwin and his brother Billy - I realized when traveling the country - are basically self-hating Americans who hate the fact that Trump is us; while Pentagon mouthpieces like Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, is Trump’s useful idiot.
She’s always talking about Russia, but nobody in America talks about Russia. Trump plays her, Alec Baldwin, SNL, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Washington Post and The New Yorker, like a fiddle.
Everyone is talking about the Paris protests. What is the root cause of the dissent?
Keiser Report coined the phrase, ‘Global Insurrection Against Banker Occupation’ (GIABO), in 2008 during the Greek Riots. Soon after that we saw the ‘Arab Spring’ and then ‘Occupy Wall Street,’ confirming the global protest movement against banksters - with the root cause being fiat money and corrupt bankers and central bankers - who simply print trillions for themselves without oversight whenever the mood strikes and without any concern how counterfeit fiat distorts and disfigures the global economy in gross and recklessly dangerous ways.
The violence we see now is baked into the fiat cake. And now bankers, like Macron, are getting their just desserts. We covered it all on the front lines in Athens, Cairo, Paris, and Zuccotti Park and witnessed the beginning of the global awakening and the rise of anger at the global bankster robber barons.
Not only did we cover this when no other news outlet was, but our viewers also benefited when we had guests on the show explaining why Gold at $400, Silver at $7, and Bitcoin at $1 were all very cheap when you understand how this global anger at banksters plays out in global markets.
You recently stated: “If every French person converted 20% of their bank deposits into Bitcoin... French banks and the government would collapse and a lot of bloodshed could be avoided.” Can you talk more about this?
Fractional reserve banking requires a minimum reserve percentage against loans set by Basil III. Removing 20% of deposits would set in motion a doom-loop of insolvency for French banks. The withdrawn cash should go onto a Bitcoin debit card so people won’t experience any inconvenience.
Plus, if a critical mass of people do this, and this applies globally, Bitcoin would hit new ATH very quickly. With the banks collapsed, and the center of wealth shifting from the banksters to the people, the protests in France would stop. The French would get rid of the current government and create a Sixth Republique.
The Kremlin just told Russian banks to prepare for disconnection from international payment systems. This is all happening as other countries back away from the US dollar as a global reserve currency. Can nations benefit from Bitcoin as a strategic geopolitical tool?
Uniquely, for the past 15 years, Russia has been paying down their debt and increasing their Gold reserves. No other country has been able to do this. Keep in mind, the point of the sanctions is to try and pry Russia back into the global debt-binging game, but they have resisted - while growing their economy. Much of this incredible success can be attributed to Elvira Nabiullina, the Russian central bank chief who is Russia’s secret weapon against Western debt-pushers and fiat money extremists.
In my opinion, Russia will start looking at Bitcoin the way they look at Gold and begin amassing Bitcoin as a strategic reserve. Putin has gone on record stating he wants Russia to be the world leader in crypto.
You stated that “we never left the financial crisis” as it simply got papered over by central banks. Now, we see the stock market starting to look shaky. If subprime was the cause of the ’08 crisis, what will spark the next crash?
The pin that pops the current bubble will probably be Deutsche Bank declaring insolvency. This will be the falling domino that starts another Lehman-esque cascading down of markets.
What will it take for Bitcoin to ‘cross the chasm’ on the tech adoption curve?
Better education? A financial crash? etc.
Meanwhile, some analysts suggest that this is a shakeout of retail investors while institutions are ‘buying the dip.’ Do you agree with this theory?
Bitcoin adoption has always been driven by bank failures, bailouts, bail-ins, and politica

Over the past several months there has been no shortage of timeline speculation regarding the current cryptocurrency bear market. Venture capitalist Albert Wenger recently wrote a few interesting thoughts on the situation.
Stuck in a bear market trend
Bitcoin sits at a price of $3,450 according to Blockmodo data at the time of writing. Crypto’s largest asset has struggled to break out of its bearish trend for most of 2018, with no definitive end in sight. Negativity for bitcoin is logical as the coin is down over 80% from all-time highs last year.
Forbes interviewed ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees a few months ago, in which he commented on 2018’s crypto bear market.
“In terms of price I think we’ve neared our low, however we could very well stay here for a while before a bull market returns. That being said, crypto is crypto. This bear market could last for several years, or we could see it end in a month or two. Neither would surprise me.”
Interesting perspective
Many crypto participants and speculators cannot help but compare the current bear market to the last one seen between 2013 and 2015.
Longest $crypto bear market was 58 weeks long (i.e. 2013/2014).$BTC retraced 86% then.
This current crypto bear market has just started its 49th week.
BTC has retraced 82% thus far.
— rektcapital (@rektcapital) November 26, 2018
However, the situation may be more complex now. Albert Wenger is a venture capitalist and partner at Union Square Ventures. Last Wednesday he posted an article talking about public risk perception.
In the article, Wenger mentioned the correlation between returns and uncertainty. Where large institutional investments are concerned, the aspect of perception plays an important role. “[I]t is one thing to lose money on a trade, it is another to lose money on a trade that people have tried many times before and is now widely ‘known’ to be a money-losing trade,” Wenger explained.
In general, potential investors must weigh general risk on their investment. But in a major bear market situation like crypto, they must also weigh the added risk of market perception.
Current perceptions for cryptocurrency markets include negativity and money loss. Wenger mentioned, “[i]f the others [public perceptions] are right, then not only will returns be below the benchmarks but there is also the question: why did you think you were smarter than everyone else?”
Wenger explained a similar situation in the early 2000s after the infamous dot-com bubble burst. He recounted the struggles one of his funds saw trying to raise money in 2001. Big players did not want to invest in something thought to be a trivial dead end.
He went on to discuss crypto application for these points, and a repetition of history. This cryptocurrency market crash is different than all previous ones. This time around, things are the same in terms of pure investment risk numbers, but different from the aspect of perception.
The last bull run gained more publicity than the crypto space had ever seen before. Institutions and big players got in on the action, while mainstream media covered the space frequently. Wenger noted these differences as important to how the current bear market will play out.
“So to think that institutional investors will [be] piling in right now is to ignore perception risk. To invest now means taking both return risk and perception risk. That’s why climbing out of the winter of the burst Dotcom bubble took time and that’s why the same is likely to be true for crypto.”
More money in the game
The 2013 cryptocurrency bull market turned bearish after achieving a total market cap high of about $15.7 billion, according to Coinmarketcap.com data. The most recent bull market saw a high of just over $800 billion in market cap.
Climbing out of the 2013-15 bear market took much less capital. The total market was a fraction of even the current market cap size. Investors could move that market’s direction with far less money than would be required now. To substantially move the current crypto market would take significant amounts of money. Institutional players have that kind of money. But as Wenger explained, those players may be hesitant to enter the market for a while going forward.
*CryptoInsider is sponsored by Blockmodo. As part of our arrangement, we may occasionally link to them and quote them when appropriate. This is done at the discretion of CI staff and CI sponsors have no say in any editorial decisions made by CI.
The post When will the crypto bear market end? appeared first on Crypto Insider.

The cryptocurrency market is often called the “Wild West”, mostly due to its seemingly lawless nature (although regulation has quickened pace more recently). At the same time, this new space which brilliantly merges applied digital cryptography with economics may resemble the gun-slinging days of Billy the Kid in the area of trading and investing as well.
Since crypto is such a young and developing market, with its 1000 percent gains and the like, it can exude an aura of “easy money”, leading people to dive into the market head-first without a plan. However, having a trading plan in crypto is vital - especially one that is specific to each trader or investor.
A tough game
Crypto trading is a zero-sum game. There must be winners and losers. Every winning trade results in someone else losing money. Having a plan can help traders or investors have a better chance at success, instead of just rolling the dice and leaving it up to chance.
The crypto market is a zero sum game. Your profit is someone else's loss. We are not Robin Hood's or Angel's of Mercy. We are not standing up for the poor, not building a better world - that's what the developers do. In the Market we are Pirates. We take. Time to get real.
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) November 25, 2018
Just because someone randomly threw $1,000 into the crypto market and ended up with $10,000, doesn’t mean the same will happen to everyone who takes a similar gamble. Trading and investing are largely about playing the odds - and randomly buying assets does not likely lead to the best odds.
Longevity in trading and investing is often about consistency. Making a huge one-time profit is not effective if that money is later lost to the market due to a lack of consistency.
Control
Financial service veteran Michael Carr once gave a wise and applicable quote that can be used for the creation of a trading plan. “Don’t worry about what the markets are going to do, worry about what you are going to do in response to the markets.”
No amount of willpower can entirely control the crypto markets. Markets have a mind of their own. That being said, the trader or investor is still in control of his or her own actions, and how to play the market in order to find success.
A plan
Rockwell Trading listed a good example of some points to consider when developing a trading plan.
Points include evaluating:
“The market(s) you want to trade.
The timeframes you want to trade, e.g. 5 min, 10 min, tick or range bars.
A brief description of the strategies you want to trade and when to use what strategy.
The entry rules of the strategies.
The exit rules of the strategies.
Other important rules, e.g. when to trade and when not to trade.
The money management approach you are using.”
(These points are also sensible for investing, but would need to be applied to a much longer timeframe.)
A custom plan
An aspect that makes trading and investing so difficult is that what may work for one person, may not work for the next person. Each individual has different biases, tendencies, tolerances, emotions, and capital allowances.
Notable fund manager Richard Driehaus once said, “[a] trading philosophy is something that cannot just be transferred from one person to another; it’s something that you have to acquire yourself through time and effort.”
In his book, Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom, author Van K. Tharp noted, “[m]y understanding has always been that you cannot trade the markets. Instead, you trade your beliefs about the market.”
Tharp’s quote is another good example of why trading and investing plans differ from person to person. Such plans and experiences are largely an exercise in self-discovery. Each person is subject to their own biases, beliefs, etc. It is important to develop a plan that provides consistency according to the individual trader or investor.
Crypto application
How does it all relate to crypto markets? Crypto markets are in their infancy, riddled with volatility. When this volatility is to the upside, it can create stories of tremendous profit. Fantastic stories filled the media with random crypto assets rising by thousands of percents during the last bull market.
These stories logically had a higher chance of luring unprepared people into the markets, than stories of common stock market successes. There is a large amount of risk if those investing or trading have early success attributed largely to luck. Without a plan, the odds could point to losing such gains in the long term.
There have been stories of people putting enormous amounts of money into crypto (money they could not afford to lose), buying the top of the market last December, as well as this year in January. This put them in a difficult position due to 2018’s bear market.
The New York Times reported on one individual who invested $23,000 into cryptocurrency markets during the hype. As of the August report, he was left with $4,000. “I got too caught up in the fear of missing out and trying to

OneHash, a leading bitcoin betting platform has announced the release of its CyberDice bitcoin game which is expected to disrupt dice market with its exciting new features.
With the bitcoin gaming entertainment industry getting more competitive with each passing day, the OneHash team has decided to launch CyberDice to help it retain its place as the market leader.
The new game comes with exciting new features including leaderboards, contests, chat arena and many more.
The firm strongly believes that the Cyberdice game has all it takes to win the hearts of game players across the globe and give players a whole new gaming experience.
“Our goal is to offer our players the most diverse, interesting, and fun experience. This is the only way to win in a highly competitive gaming environment. Players need to enjoy the game and feel special, but this can only be achieved through constant innovation that answers their needs. Users value their community as well as promotions and rewards, tailored to their playing style. Our newly developed features answer those needs and wer’re confident that players will love them,” said Brand Manager at CyberDice, Philip Miller.
Exciting Features
In addition to the contests and community features that players can enjoy in the CyberDice game, there are also a host of other excellent features, including:
- Regular faucet
- A provably fair system
- Entirely mobile friendly
- Attractive design and UX
- Dedicated customer support
- Highly secure
The development team also added other key features to give players that post-apocalyptic feeling, as it comes with the Oracle concept which tells the future to those not afraid to hear it.
The OneHash team has made it clear that though the game is already packed with all the excitement gamers are looking for, they will keep adding more features to it.
“The years of experience in the gaming industry has led us to a point where we can create excellent products. CyberDice is the first step, but there are many more to come. Since our team is made up of tech and gaming experts, we have decided to combine the two worlds and create the game that everyone would love to play,” added Miller.
Just recently, OneHash launched two exciting games, Moon and Goals, to complement its existing Dice and Slots games.
Established in 2014, OneHash is a highly reputed bitcoin mutual and exchange betting sportsbook and casino, offering users secure and fair betting services across a vast array of sports, eSports, curated events and more.
For more, visit https://cyberdice.net
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CyberDiceGame/
Email: phillip.miller@onehash.com
The post CyberDice By OneHash Set to Take Over The Bitcoin Dice Ecosystem appeared first on ZyCrypto.

Gaming is one industry that’s still inspiring the blockchain community, regardless of market condition. Joseph Lubin recently touted gaming as one of the reasons he believes in blockchain technology, pointing to “gamers that play around with dice, kitties, and dApps.” MobileGo (MGO), a new cryptocurrency targeting in-game rewards, is doing its part with the beta release of an esports platform, placing competitive gaming in the spotlight and giving gamers a distraction from the crypto bear market.
While the MobileGo community has a lot to celebrate as the project advances, the MGO price has been caught in this year’s downturn and has shed three-quarters of its value since its 2018 peak. MobileGo isn’t letting that get in the way of its marketing and is in the midst of its third airdrop, worth up to 10 MGO tokens, which helped lift the price earlier in the week.
Gaming has the potential to bolster mainstream adoption of the blockchain and cryptocurrencies amid a $137.9 billion global market opportunity, according to MobileGo stats. MobileGo is betting that it can usher in the “second gaming revolution by bringing competitive esports to everyone.” They are currently supporting HTML5 games on PC and mobile platforms.
Slice Fruit on Esport Platform
Fortnite has already proven the demand for multiplayer games by attracting 125 million gamers and generating over $1.2bn in sales. MobileGo takes a similar approach in that its games are free to play, but the blockchain-based esports platform also rewards users with tokens for participating in tournaments. Gamers can win Gshare Gold, which opens the door for them to participate in Gshare Gold fee-based tournaments.
The fee-based tournaments give gamers the chance to win MGO tokens, which they can then transfer to a wallet like MEW or Waves, since MobileGo had its ICO on both the Ethereum and Waves platforms. Gaming publishers can also receive royalty payments in MGO tokens, which they can convert into cash or HODL.
Decentralization Is A Game-Changer
Decentralization has been a game-changer for developers for several reasons, as they stand a chance in a market where app stores like Apple and Google attach hefty commission fees for developers. The blockchain opens a new world to gaming devs so that they can bypass those fees and track the performance of their games while also collecting direct and real-time payments, features that are missing from the traditional gaming space.
The challenge, however, remains shrouded in converting non-blockchain gamers into blockchain gamers even with the hoops that one must jump through to join. POA Network’s Igor Barinov told Forbes:
To play a game on the blockchain, a new user must go through so many steps, from installing a web wallet like MetaMask or Nifty Wallet, to understanding concepts of gas and Eth, to figuring out how to get Eth to pay for gas and fuel in the first place!
MobileGo canvassed its social media followers to learn the device of choice for gaming, and the PC won nearly half of the vote. Mobile and console gaming were neck and neck, which bodes well for MobileGo’s planned release of iOS and Android games “shortly.” The MobileGo roadmap is chock full of more games and tournaments. Now if gaming publishers could just create the Fortnite of the blockchain, mainstream adoption wouldn’t be an issue.
The author is invested in ETH, which is mentioned in this article.
The post MobileGo Aims To Score With Esports appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

A few hours ago Bitcoin revisited its lowest level in 2018. After a week of down trending and failure to break key resistance levels this latest plunge comes as no surprise.
Bitcoin Revisits 2018 Low
With a 5% slide Bitcoin dumped from $3,450 down to $3,284 during intraday trading. This repeats the yearly low it made almost a week ago on December 8. According to Coinmarketcap BTC fell sharply around 19.00 UTC after spending most of the week above $3,400.
Bitcoin reached $3,680 briefly on Monday but has been in a downward slide ever since, hitting the bottom a couple of hours ago before rebounding a little. At the time of writing BTC was trading at just over $3,300. It is the second time it has hit this level and is likely to stay there for a while before falling further.
Bitcoin has almost halved since the same time last month when it was trading closer to $6,400. Since all-time high, a year ago next week, Bitcoin has hemorrhaged 83.6% to its current low. Previous crashes have been worse however so the daddy of digital currencies is not out of the woods yet.
Analysts have predicted a fall to $3,000 which is looking more likely every day as markets weaken further. Friday’s have been particularly painful in crypto land for the past few weeks. Last Friday saw a $15 billion dump to a new low for the year and previous ones have not been much better.
Total cryptocurrency market capitalization has not quite hit a new low at the moment but is very close to it. With a level of just below $105 billion at the time of writing it does not have that far to go and the weekend could see things plunge below the psychological barrier of $100 billion.
The near future sees no catalyzing factors to reverse this trend and crypto aficionados are pinning hopes on institutional heavyweights such as Bakkt and Fidelity getting their products off the launch pad.
The general public, fed by mainstream media FUD, has largely written off Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a flash in the pan. Only the hardcore hodlers, and whales that loaded up years ago, are still in the game it seems.
Those that have done their research and actually understand what they are investing in will weather the storm. A further drop for Bitcoin is unlikely to faze the people that are here for the long run.
Image from Shutterstock
The post Bitcoin Back at 2018 Low, Price Halved in a Month appeared first on NewsBTC.

Latest Tron News
The crypto market has been damaging and with some folding up in the face of dropping asset prices, some as Tron are trudging towards accomplishing their initial vision-mission statements. In their bid to further decentralize the web and create this symbiotic relationship with developers, platform users and the foundation, the co-founder never tires from marketing the platform.
And as he continues to compare the performance of Tron with those of EOS and Ethereum, developers and projects are beginning to flock to Tron. It may be because Ethereum developers took long before agreeing on when to activate Constantinople and during that time developers were drawn to the $100,000 loan on offer by the Tron Foundation.
Here is the overview of TRC 20 tokens, some of TRC 20 tokens were already listed on https://t.co/cAeZU5w1jW, #TRONICS can also create your own tokens and submit your applications. More to come! #TRON #TRX $TRX https://t.co/BTJaXhaT9d pic.twitter.com/GzfbYwLXJS
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) December 13, 2018
Read: First 100K Tron (TRX) Loan Reward Distribution: A Big Development For Tron
At the same time game developers couldn’t resist the Tron Accelerator and Arcade programs that seek to reward excellent contribution to the ecosystem.
Coincidentally—and as highlighted by Justin Sun, the launch of these two has seen transaction and addresses spike. As a matter of fact, two records were broken in the last two days.
5,000,000 transactions here we come! #TRX
— TRON News | 新聞 (@TronNews_) December 14, 2018
To further pad the foundation, Sun is making proposals to the governing body for the reduction of energy costs from 20 SUN to 10 SUN. If it gets 2/3 support from the team, the cost of smart contracts will drastically reduce. This in turn will be more attractive for developers.
I have submitted Proposal 9 to reduce #TRON energy cost from 20 sun to 10 sun, which will dramatically decrease the cost of smart contract and creat a developer friendly environment. Please vote for Proposal 9! #TRX $TRX https://t.co/SaIfXXjDbr
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) December 10, 2018
TRX/USD Price Analysis
Amid immense sell pressure, TRX is the top performer in the top 15 adding three percent in the last week. Even though TRX is yet to break into the top 10, favorable candlestick formation and prospects of higher highs could see TRX expand towards 1.5 cents dislodging ADA from 10th.
Trend: Flat, Ranging
If anything, sell momentum has been wearing off in the last few days. TRX/USD is now confined within a 0.5 cents range. With clear caps and support at 1.5-1.7 cents on the upside and 1 cent on the lower edge, bulls will only be in charge if and only if there are strong rallies above our trade triggers. For now, we shall assume this is distribution since sellers have an upper hand and the path of least resistance—like other assets- is southwards.
Volumes: Increasing, bullish
Anchoring our bullish stand is that encouraging surge of Nov 28. Then, behind the sharp upturn were high trade volumes—12 million verses 4 million. But volumes have since tapered off and we cannot compare volumes of Dec 12, 1100HRs bull bar—4 million versus 1 million or Dec 14, 0300 HRs bull pin bar—4.1 million versus 1.3 million with those of Nov 28.
These recent bars define our trade range because if prices edge past Dec 12 highs of around 1.4 cents, the first wave of buyers should load up aiming at 1.5 cents, 2 cents and later 3 cents.
Candlestick Formation: Accumulation/Distribution
Depending on breakout direction, this ranging market could either turn out to be an accumulation or distribution. Should bulls build on Dec 14 pin bar and print above 1.4 cents today or over the weekend, we might see TRX/USD testing 1.5 cents by the end of the week boosting market cap. Otherwise, losses below 1.2 cents or Dec 7 lows would further shake out market participants.
Conclusion
In light of the above, our TRX/USD trade plan will be as follows:
Buy: 1.4 cents, 1.5 cents, 1.7 cents
Stops: 1.2 cents, 1.4 cents, 1.5 cents
Target: 2 cents, 3 cents, 4 cents
All Charts Courtesy of Trading View.
This is no way Investment or Financial Advice. Do your own Research.
The post Tron Price Analysis: TRX/USD Up $39 million the Last Week appeared first on Ethereum World News.

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Augmented reality games are notorious for collecting their users’ data to create more accurate virtual environments. HashCash Consultants’ blockchain gaming platform has come up as a practical solution to this problem. By playing augmented reality games, you risk granting gaming organizations access to the contents of your gallery, SD Card or your cloud accounts. To solve this problem, HashCash has collaborated with an Australian game developer to transfer its infrastructure onto HC NET. In so doing, the firm manages the creation of a native cryptocurrency, which you can use to make in-game transactions. (VK)

Yesterday, Augmentor Game announced via Twitter that Apple had decided to feature Augmentors, a mobile blockchain-based game on its App Store. Per the announcement, iOS users can now download version V.1.0.9 of the game. Vinny Lingham, Civic’s co-founder, and CEO retweeted the firm’s success and added that Augmentors is the first blockchain-based game on the App Store. This news comes three months after the firm launched the iOS and Android versions of Augmentors. In related news, Arcade Distillery recently announced that it is preparing to roll out a new PS4 game on the Ethereum blockchain. (KE)

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